Watery lace

This time of year, I just keep weaving, and weaving, and weaving to build up my inventory for the coming show season. It’s nice to weave light, lacy fabrics when it’s cold out – it makes spring seem right around the corner.

Of course this year, we had a week of summer before winter was even over. Despite my weather concerns, I’m still enjoying weaving scarves for spring and summer. I’m using up that hand painted yarn I ordered. And yeah, I’ve subsequently ordered two more batches of Tammy’s yummy yarn.

It’s no surprise that I like saturated colors, and gemtones, so it’s completely fitting that one of my personal favorites is Tammy’s Ocean Waves colorway. I’ve used it in rayon chenille, bamboo, bamboo-cotton, and tencel. It’s always successful, and always popular. So I ordered a bunch more. This time in a blend of bamboo & tencel.

I worked out a new lace design for my little 4-harness counterbalance loom, and warped for four scarves. I could vary the treadling and create two somewhat different lace designs – either an open cross of four lace squares or a mini checkerboard of five.

The two scarves on the right look the same color in real life – no idea why they look so different in this picture. For the first three scarves, I used the same variegated yarn for both warp and weft. For the fourth, on the left in the photo, I used a solid, bright turquoise bamboo. It really lightens those scarves up a lot. I wasn’t positive if I’d like it, but I do. I like them all.

After I twisted the fringes and wet finished these scarves, I wasn’t ready to be done with the watery-colored yarn. So I measured out another warp of three scarves, this time in a log cabin pattern with black bamboo.

Although weaving with two shuttles takes me more than twice the time of weaving with one, the end result in a log cabin weave makes the time investment worthwhile. It turns a plain weave into something that thrills the eye. At least it does for me. I will definitely have to weave some more log cabin for this season.

I have so many more things I want to weave, so many ideas. There’s no way I can build in time to weave everything I want to. A least not if I want to sleep. And I do love to sleep. Still, despite my long stretch of unproductive time due to the nasty virus, I’ve completed 67 handwoven scarves, plus the 10 towels and 3 baby blankets since the first of the year. 30 scarves in March alone. I’m threading a loom for a warp of 2 shawls right now, and I’m hoping I can add them to my list of March completions.

Can you tell I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive? But you knew that already, didn’t you.

March 29th, 2012 | 

Not my cup of tea

I’ve long admired the finished product of soft, flowing curves in woven items. Particularly with only 4 shafts, this isn’t always eas to produce. So when I saw Bonnie Inouye’s article on Weavezine, I decided I had to give it a shot. I had several other projects that had to take priority, though, so while I waited my desire just increased.

This week I was finally at a point where I could check it out. I used Bonnie’s draft and set up my loom. Trust me when I tell you i took LOTS of attention to thread the heddles correctly – 72 threads in one pattern repeat!

I used a deep, rich purple 8/2 rayon for the warp, sett at 18 ends per inch. I’ve used this sett with this yarn for a variety of patterns, and always liked the result. To show the curves off well, I picked a medium green rayon for weft. I figured it would be a lovely as the amethyst & peridot jewelry I’ve made.

Hah! Wrong again!

I started with a few rows of plain weave, as I usually do for stability. Then I wove one repeat of the 70-row treadling pattern. This was clearly too loose to make a stable fabric, plus I didn’t like how it looked.

Next I tried another repeat of the 70-row treadling, this time beating much more firmly. Much more stable, but not much better looking, to my eye at least.

I waited overnight to see if I’d like it better the next day. That sometimes works. I can see the beauty of things after a time away, or their flaws, or get an idea on how to improve things.

I didn’t like it any better, but did have an idea. Maybe my weft needed to be much thicker than the warp for it to work well. So I made two shots of each row, doubling the weft thickness, for a third 70-row pattern. Yes, the pattern shows up better, but I still don’t like it.

I’m going to unweave all this, unthread reed & heddles, and re-thread in another pattern. Not sure exactly what yet, but I’ll use a tried & true, I think. I want to weave something I’m pretty certain to like!

March 14th, 2012 |